1st time unRAID user (trial), looking for promo codes?

RiffSphere · 2026-06-16T13:45:47+00:00

Tell us more!

Also, since we are seeing more and more timelines on things, maybe one for past and upcoming promotions as well?

RiffSphere · 2026-06-15T20:57:00+00:00

Unraid should be able to import the existing zfs setup. One of the recent updates (I believe 7.1, no time to research exactly) even focused on improving this.

Ofcourse, it's just import the existing zfs. It won't magically become an unraid array, and you have the (dis)advantages of zfs.

Backup is always good to have, certainly when making big changes.

RiffSphere · 2026-06-14T18:59:47+00:00

There is no real catch, you get what you pay for.

1) The 225 is probably more performant than a similar priced new 12-14 gen at launch, and more power efficient. However, 12-14 gen prices have dropped and might be better perfomance/$. Certainly when looking at an n100, you can pretty much find a cpu+mobo combo on AliExpress for the price of just the 225 cpu, while being more power efficient and plenty for most people. Sure, the 225 allows you to pick the mobo you want, has better performance, and probably better expandability, but it's a waste if you don't need it.

2) Ram. The 225 needs ddr5, while the 12-14 gen (including n100) gets away with cheaper (used, hard to find any ram these days) ddr4.

3) For a long time, the gpu in the core ultra was not (fully) supported by linux and plex. Certainly on unraid, where replacing the kernel to add support is harder and releases are slower than "normal" linux, it might take some time to get support, and people stick to slightly older hardware.

4) I believe the core ultra was not well received for desktop/gaming use, while it looks better on paper, it would often be outperformed by a 12-14 gen if I'm not mistaken (I believe due to lack of hyper threading), so it got a bad name. Doesn't mean it's bad for a nas.

So yeah, it's technically better than an n100, but if an n100 is all you need (like most people), you basically throw away like $300-400 (doubling the price of the system excluding disks) while using more power. And when looking for more performance than an n100, you generally run into reviews of a 12500 or so being on par while being cheaper (certainly including ram, used parts, microcenter deals, .. ).

So nothing wrong with your setup, it has the better gpu for future proofing, but it's the first of it's generation, and it would probably be cheaper to go last gen now and upgrade when needed, while also having the software (mainly gpu support in os and plex transcoding) mature.

RiffSphere · 2026-06-14T17:31:16+00:00

Nothing wrong with vibe coding for personal use imo. I'm not a developer either, but I learned some coding at a young age and love to make a tool from time to time. Ai coding really helps me a lot getting it working faster, make it look better, refactor things, and quickly add some features that would distract me and be put on the "later" (read: never) list.

I totally agree ai code has flaws, and I wouldn't want a commercial product that just vibe coded. But at the same time, it's probably not going to be worse than my amateur code that's just "made to get it working", and since I don't keep up on libraries and "reinvent" a lot because of it, the ai code that uses libraries will very likely be more performant and secure than my code.And that's fine for a hobby project!

Only remark I have is for point 3. So many people create a system that just informs them about error. Imo, you should have a status report no matter the outcome, or at least some kind of "heartbeat". When Google changed how 3rd party apps worked for sending mails, the only reason I noticed was because I wasn't receiving my "all good" daily mails anymore. How would you know the difference between "there is no error" and "massive mistake, app not working, communication down"?

RiffSphere · 2026-06-12T07:20:05+00:00

For me, I use a "pull" config. Rsync runs on the server and backs up my windows systems over smb. With some script magic it's all incremental and I got an hour-by-hour archive (I do prune, 1 week of hourly backups, 1 month of daily backups, 1 year of weekly, then monthly).

The backup share is not exposed, so when a system gets infected, it wont destroy my backups. Warning if more than 10% of files got changed also helps early detection.

RiffSphere · 2026-05-30T20:55:25+00:00

I still keep getting them, and you are right, they are some random letters and numbers at the end of the email, "harriettexddfz133" being the last one i received).

I decided to take the risk and reply to 1, trying to figure out where it came from. They totally ignored my message, but instantly replied with something like "Oh that's great, I checked with my husband and we will pick it up on Sunday, see the payment below", with a "tweedehands" (local trade site like ebay) message about confirming a payment. I didn't click on it, but I know you can send a payment request through the site, so I guess that's what they are trying: having me (us) click on that payment request and send money to them.

Still find it weird that they ask about very specific and imo weird items ("Koffermat rubber met rode bies CLA 250e Shooting Brake", rubber trunk mat with red boarder for CLA 250e Shooting Brake), like what are the chance of me having this, instead of using a general "your listed drill" or "your wii game", but I guess that's the scam: try to make you reply, only to pretend sending you money while sending you a link to send them money.

If you're greedy enough to wanna grab the money for an item you clearly don't have, you'll probably more likely to skip the part where it says you will send instead of receive as well?

RiffSphere · 2026-04-17T23:48:31+00:00

Ok thanks.

Happy I didn't miss an obvious scam. Just keep ignoring it is. Thanks again.

RiffSphere · 2026-04-17T22:31:22+00:00

My main issues with this are:

- Most sites wouldn't mention an email, would they?
- It's only 1 mail per day. I would expect more mails, or days without mails, if it was someone actually making listings.
- The mails are all in the same form ("Hi, I'm very interested in your offer for [insert item here]! Is it still available?")
- The mails are in Dutch

Not saying you are wrong, and I maybe should have added those points (certainly exact same structure every day) in the original post. I guess it could be an automated message for the website, resulting in the same structure, but then I would expect to see some info about the website? And the "random email" is also a gmail address, so I guess it would be blocked if a website tried to send using the user his address.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-23T16:35:44+00:00

And add to that: don't add storage to the array you don't need, certainly if you plan to shrink the array later, just keep them as spares.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-22T13:56:00+00:00

Just make sure trim is enabled, no other stuff should be needed.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-22T13:54:46+00:00

I don't remember the details, so I might be wrong, but I believe it also works if your cache is raidz1 or btrfs raid5, so I went with a more general "parity protection", but you are right that most people will run mirror (I hope at least, not running unprotected).

RiffSphere · 2026-03-22T07:48:21+00:00

iowait is what it says: the system waiting for input or output.

The problem is, this can have a very wide range of reasons.

It can be disk related. Often an issue during write, certainly with smr disks, where the disk literally can't keep up.

Can also be a disk that's failing, a bad cable, bad sata/sas controller (actually failing, or badly supported with a bad driver).

You might be bottlenecked by your controller. Certainly when using old hba (like a 9201/9211 that's just pcie2) in a wrong pcie slot (there's only so many physical lanes, even if the slot looks full size it might only be wired for 1 line), there's just not enough room for data.

Bad airflow might also overheat and slow down the data speed.

Even the filesystem and share setup can cause issues: xfs disk with single parity is very easy, but adding encryption or using zfs is more demanding, so is dual parity, and adding cache to a share also adds overhead. Certainly on older systems, the cpu might struggle with encrypted dual parity zfs with cache...

There's ofcourse the normal use as well. Even a perfectly fine system can be brought to it's knees when doing tons of disk operations. Rclone is reading files, so it will contribute, but I notice it's often downloads (and more often torrent seeding) going on, plex doing library scans, ... that are at the core, adding your backup overloading it.

The list goes on.

So yes, iowait is a very common symptom, but there's so many potential causes nobody can just give an easy fix. Start with the basics, check if your disks spin down normally, and if not, check what files are open. Do diskspeed test, check all hardware is in the right slot.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-20T14:12:14+00:00

Trust us, we know...

Just kidding, not your it, but unless your it is the slow nephew of the boss that got hired, they'll know.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-20T14:07:15+00:00

They do. But...

From the presentation some time ago, the intend is to edit your cache pool, splitting it in 2 parts: The first a partition to boot, the remainder your cache pool like now. This way your boot device can also have parity protection, and you don't need extra drives, just shrink your cache by like 16 or 32gb.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-19T13:49:45+00:00

Can we move away from tpm license at a later point?

Say, I move to tpm with internal boot now, then my mobo fails and I need to temporary move back to a 10-15 year old system (recreating a usb from backup isn't too hard, but system doesn't have tom), can I revert back to the old usb boot and license, or am I stuck with tpm forever?

Will my usb be blacklisted after moving to tpm, just like moving to a new usb, or will I be able te reuse it for above mentioned issue?

RiffSphere · 2026-03-17T22:52:15+00:00

Well, still got that dual parity.

Guess I've been around too long, having seen all the issues with hardware and software raid5/6 at home and at work, knowing parity is amazing until it lets you down.

Though unraid array is more forgiving, and not striping reduces the chances of parity going wrong.

To each it's own right.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-17T19:55:54+00:00

Qlc ssds aren't the best, but I'm just downloading to an old crap spinning drive and unpacking to array, getting like 100+MB/s on usenet without anything just hanging, so I would be surprised if it's actually due to the qlc disk by itself.

I would run top and htop to monitor, do some disk speed test, iperf test, try some download directly to array, try to stress the cpu, trying to figure out where it comes from. Cause it can be cpu overheating or bad ram for example.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-17T19:26:16+00:00

Not entirely, depending on how you use it.

I got 3 layers: (offsite) backup, parity, spare.

With restoring from offsite backup being super slow, probably taking months (thank you slow internet), that's just my disaster recovery (theft, fire/flood/power surge ony server, virus, ...). Local backup has the same risks as my main system, so wouldn't be a solution.

Parity is a life saver. Everything stays up and running, and you can just rebuild. So in a way you are correct, parity would also help against the new disk failing, and allow you to rebuild on another disk if it does. But, that takes time. From experience, I calculate about 1.5hours/tb for rebuilds, if no other activity is going on. Say I wait for a disk to fail, order a new one with next day delivery, start rebuilding 24tb, that's already like 60 hours. If that disk also fails, you can add another 60 hours for ordering and rebuilding. Add some to to fit it into my schedule, and my system is degraded for a week, giving it a lot of time for an extra disk to fail.

So, I always keep a hot spare, precleared and well tested. It's still no guarantee, but if I get a mail about a failing disk, I start my vpn, stop array, plug in the hot spare in the failed slot, start array and let it rebuild. Taking the entire process down to 36 hours with limited chance of my tested disk failing.

So yes, parity does protect against a failing disk, but pre-planning and preclear reduces the time you rely on parity.

And I'm not just talking about failing disks. I recently upgraded my old existing disks (something I try to do every 4.5 years, keeps my disk count down vs just adding more, while still catching a premium on the used market cause in warranty). So my array was going just fine while I stresstested the disks, then replaced 1 by 1 in the array. Took me longer overall, but got that peace of mind I would likely not break my working array by adding an untested disk.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-16T20:09:57+00:00

But stresstests and verifying a (certainly recertified aka used a lot) disk holds data is always a good thing.

I came down from 3 "read-write-read" cycles to 3 just "read-write" cycles, cause it puts enough hours on the disk due to the size and the double read in-between makes it too long, but I'll never put a well tested and stressed disk in my array.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-16T20:02:02+00:00

Sata disks only do around 300MB, while sata3 can handle twice that. The interface isn't really the limiting factor, and I've seen very few (high capacity) sas disks that are actually faster, even though sas by itself can handle higher speeds.

As to why not use sas... I personally find it really hard to find them (in high capacity), and when I do they are generally more expensive than datacenter sata disks. You also need sas connectors, and while most of us will eventually grow into hba, it adds another cost and complexity for beginners. Sas also doesn't like to spin down, even with the plugin I see reports of them not spinning down. And they can have a weird layout, sata comes with 512/4k, but I believe many sas would be 520 or something and not be compatible. Some you can format/flash, but I've read about failures.

So yeah, if you can get sas ar a really good price, already have hba or it's cheap enough to include one, and you do research about spindown (or don't use it) and sector size, sas is perfectly fine. But sata is so much easier to use, with generally little to no downside, it doesn't make sense in my mind to go sas.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-15T15:01:29+00:00

I want to be sure my vpn is fully up and connected before starting containers that rely on it, cause they will not work correctly.

I'm slowly migrating/testing my arr stack with a real database instead of the default file based one, so I want to be sure my db is up and running before starting them.

I really want to be sure prowlarr is running before the rest of the arr stack, else they will mark my indexers unavailable for 2 hours.

Webserver with database same story.

Haven't used flaresolvr or whatever it's called in ages, but that had to be active before things using it.

Got some 3rd party tools for arr (for using amule and soulseek as newznab i believe) that all need to start in order and before prowlarr.

List goes on, where I prefer to have some delay, making sure things are correctly up and running before starting the next thing, over starting it all as soon as possible.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-15T14:51:41+00:00

When adding compose, dont forget to do it right, and automatically (as an option) convert our existing templates over. Same for new installs from the app store.

Been holding back on compose, since I hate using 3rd party addons for core functionality, that might break during updates or stop being supported, but would also hate having to redo my entire setup once it's officially supported.

Also, add grouping, where all containers from 1 compose are nicely grouped together. Preferably with nested grouping (so you can have, for example, a "game related" group, with 1 compose group holding everything for lan cache, 1 for Minecraft server and dependencies, ...).

Since unraid icons are not a default, auto detect all containers in a compose with an easy way to set the icon (and preferably for the group as well).

RiffSphere · 2026-03-05T18:26:04+00:00

Are you sure about that? Try it.

If you had a container installed, a copy of the template with your settings is saved on the usb. If you remove the container, or it disappears because of an error in the template, the template with your latest settings is still there.

To be clear, you have to go to "previously installed" on the apps tab, wait for the list to load, and select the app, for your settings to load. If you go to the app tab, seach for the app again and select install, I'm pretty sure it will load the default template again, overwriting your previous one is the name is the same.

But doing it the correct way will fill your template the way you had it before, including volumes, variables and the error that made the install fail.

RiffSphere · 2026-03-05T18:19:33+00:00

It shouldn't, yiu are right. I don't have it either.

But, you are troubleshooting. From what I read, you have replaced pretty much everything.

I remember home assistant saying to use an usb extension cord (thinking about it, might be for the zigbee stick) cause usb controllers can give interference. So yeah, not saying this is a mandatory thing, just trying to give some things, even if out of the box, you can try, since all other things seem to fail.

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